I used to sprint the two blocks to her house with the speed of an Olympic athlete—even if it was just to sit on the giant house-length front porch to wait for her to finish eating dinner. Then, once we were together, we were off for an adventure. And it was a different one every day. One without computers, tablets or smartphones. The only technology involved was the kind our imaginations could invent--far superior to anything Silicon Valley can offer today. I wrote about Caro

When I found "Sammy the Robot" from  my previous blog , I also ran across another treasured relic that has been with me even longer. My gram was severely disabled by rheumatoid arthritis for my entire memory of her. Most of the time in my life, she was fairly homebound. But when I was a very little kid, she and Pap would take the hour drive down to our house “in the country” from where they lived in Northwest Indiana every so often. They drove in a tank-like early 1970s brow

As my knees buckled, and my body careened to the hard cement at the top of the steps, I could hear the kid next to me saying, "Don't lock your knees." How do you stand for hours in the hot sun and not do that? As I lay crumpled on the scorching June concrete, I heard the kid say to the adult rushing to my pathetic rescue: "He locked his knees." It had been an intense week, and all I remember about the photo I standing for before losing consciousness was the irritation in my

One day in sixth grade, my classmate Dusty asked, "Ronnie, do you know what the strongest geometric shape is?" Though out of the blue, he seemed pretty confident about this topic--and the answer. I had no idea what he was talking about. I hated geometry and preferred spending time in my head thinking about important topics like recent storylines on "Battlestar Galactica" or “Charlie’s Angels." But he was my friend, so I indulged him. "No," I replied. "A triangle," he said

TO: Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers CC: Oscar Goldman, Director, Office of Scientific Intelligence, Dr. Rudy Wells It's been a while, hasn’t it? You might not remember me, but we worked together for a while back in the 70s (see photo). Though I wasn't quite as well known as you two were, I held my own in areas specific to espionage, Big Foot hunting and Fembot control. I was the youngest agent in Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) history, if you'll recall. Yes, my...

Sharing this again from last year.

In the fourth grade our teacher, Mrs. Fisher--with her flaming orange hair and clown red lipstick applied liberally outside the lines of her lips would say things like "whatever rattles your cage" and warned a dim classmate to stop pulling out his own hair otherwise he'd be "bald as a billiard ball." (Like any of us knew what billiards were.) She was like a small town version of Lucille Ball--but scarier. My best friend Carol and I were having an imaginary pie throwing fight

PadLo was up and ready for an adventure! So after securing him into the back seat, we set off for my small hometown in Indiana for a weekend visit. There was a time when my dramatic storyline-driven teen self regarded my hometown as Alcatraz Island, my house as the actual prison, and my parents as tyrannical co-wardens. I was the wrongfully imprisoned character. But those days and feelings waned long ago. As I matured (and I use that term loosely), I grew to realize how luc

Last week, after finishing the first draft of my novel, I started writing about a bullying experience with a kid from high school. (To be clear, I was the one being bullied...I know...shocker!) Tonight, I just finished the fifth version and sent it to a writer friend for her input. I was so excited to send it off and get her esteemed opinion. But as soon as I hit "send," I could feel my heart beating heavily. The knot in my stomach that evokes this experience--reserved now fo